“I thought you told me you never mentioned out loud where she could hear it what Mink would do as soon as he got back inside the same town limits with Flem,” Ratliff said.
“I didn’t need to,” Stevens said. “Linda and I both agreed that there was no need for him to come back here. After forty years, with his wife dead and his daughters scattered God knows where; that in fact he would be better off if he didn’t. So she’s putting up the money. She wanted to make it a thousand but I told her that much in a lump would destroy him sure. So I’m going to leave two-fifty with the Warden, to be handed to him the minute before they unlock the gate to let him through it, with the understanding that the moment he accepts the money, he has given his oath to cross the Mississippi state line before sundown, and that another two-fifty will be sent every three months to whatever address he selects, provided he never again crosses the Mississippi line as long as he lives.”
“I see,” Ratliff said. “He can’t tech the money a-tall except on the condition that he don’t never lay eyes on Flem Snopes again as long as he lives.”
“That’s right,” Stevens said.
“Suppose jest money ain’t enough,” Ratliff said. “Suppose he won’t take jest two hundred and fifty dollars for Flem Snopes.”
“Remember,” Stevens said. “He’s going to face having to measure thirty-eight years he has got rid of, put behind him, against two more years he has still got to spend inside a cage to get rid of. He’s selling Flem Snopes for these next two years, with a thousand dollars a year bonus thrown in free for the rest of his life. Sign it.”
“Don’t rush me,” Ratliff said. “Destiny and fate. They was what you told me about being proud to be a handmaid of, wasn’t they?”
“So what?” Stevens said. “Sign it.”
“Don’t you reckon you ought to maybe include a little luck into them too?”
“Sign it,” Stevens said.
“Have you told Flem yet?”
“He hasn’t asked me yet,” Stevens said.
“When he does ask you?” Ratliff said.
“Sign it,” Stevens said.
“I already did,” Ratliff said. He laid the pen back on the desk. “You’re right. We never had no alternative not to. If you’d a said No, she would jest got another lawyer that wouldn’t a said No nor even invented that two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar gamble neither. And then Flem Snopes wouldn’t a had no chance a-tall.”
None of the other requisite documents presented any difficulty either. The judge who had presided at the trial was dead of course, as was the incumbent sheriff, old Hub Hampton. But his son, known as Little Hub, had inherited not only his father’s four-year alternation as sheriff, but also his father’s capacity to stay on the best of political terms with his alternating opposite number, Ephriam Bishop. So Stevens had those two names; also the foreman of the grand jury at the time was a hale (hence still quick) eighty-five, even running a small electric-driven corn mill while he wasn’t hunting and fishing with Uncle Ike McCaslin, another octogenarian: plus a few other select signatures which Stevens compelled on to his petition as simply and ruthlessly as he did Ratliff’s. Though what he considered his strongest card was a Harvard classmate, an amateur in state politics who had never held any office, who for years had been a sort of friend-of-the-court adviser to governors simply because all the state factions knew he was not only a loyal Mississippian but one already too wealthy to want anything.
So Stevens would have — indeed, intended to have — nothing but progress to report to his client after he sent the documents in to the state capital and the rest of the summer passed toward and into fall — September, when Mississippi (including governors and legislatures and pardon boards) would put their neckties and coats back on and assume work again. Indeed, he felt he could almost select the specific day and hour he preferred to have the prisoner freed, choosing late September and explaining why to his client on the pad of yellow office foolscap, specious, voluble, convincing since he himself was convinced. September, the mounting apex of the cotton-picking season when there would be not only work, familiar work, but work which of all the freed man had the strongest emotional ties with, which after thirty-eight years of being compelled to it by loaded shotguns, he would now be paid by the hundredweight for performing it. This, weighed against being freed at once, back in June, with half a summer of idleness plus the gravitational pull back to where he was born; not explaining to Linda his reasons why the little child-size creature who must have been mad to begin with and whom thirty-eight years in a penitentiary could not have improved any, must not come back to Jefferson; hiding that too behind the rational garrulity of the pencil flying along the ruled lines — until suddenly he would look up (she of course had heard nothing) and Ratliff would be standing just inside the office door looking at them, courteous, bland, inscrutable, and only a little grave and thoughtful too now. So little in fact that Linda anyway never noticed it, at least not before Stevens, touching, jostling her arm or elbow as he rose (though this was never necessary; she had felt the new presence by now), saying, “Howdy, V.K. Come in. Is it that time already?”
“Looks like it,” Ratliff would say. “Mawnin, Linda.”
“Howdy, V.K.,” she would answer in her deaf voice but almost exactly with Stevens’s inflection: who could not have heard him greet Ratliff since, and even he could not remember when she could have heard him before. Then Stevens would produce the gold lighter monogrammed G L S though L was not his initial, and light her cigarette, then at the cabinet above the wash basin he and Ratliff would assemble the three thick tumblers and the sugar basin and the single spoon and a sliced lemon and Ratliff would produce from his clothing somewhere the flask of corn whiskey a little of which old Mr Calvin Bookwright still made and aged each year and shared now and then with the few people tactful enough to retain his precarious irascible friendship. Then, Linda with her cigarette and Stevens with his cob pipe, the three of them would sit and sip the toddies, Stevens still talking and scribbling now and then on the pad for her to answer, until she would set down her empty glass and rise and say good-bye and leave them. Then Ratliff said:
“So you ain’t told Flem yet.” Stevens smoked. “But then of course you don’t need to, being as it’s pretty well over the county now that Mink Snopes’s cousin Linda or niece Linda or whichever it is, is getting him out.” Stevens smoked. Ratliff picked up one of the toddy glasses. “You want another one?”
“No, much obliged,” Stevens said.
“So you ain’t lost your voice,” Ratliff said. “Except, maybe back there in that vault in the bank where he would have to be counting his money, he can’t hear what’s going on. Except maybe that one trip he would have to make outside.” Stevens smoked. “To go across to the sheriff’s office.” Stevens smoked. “You right sho you don’t want another toddy?”
“All right,” Stevens said. “Why?”
“That’s what I’m asking you. You’d a thought the first thing Flem would a done would been to go to the sheriff and remind him of them final words of Mink’s before Judge Long invited him to Parchman. Only he ain’t done that. Maybe because at least Linda told him about them two hundred and fifty dollars and even Flem Snopes can grab a straw when there ain’t nothing else in sight? Because naturally Flem can’t walk right up to her and write on that tablet, The minute you let that durn little water moccasin out he’s going to come straight back here and pay you up to date for your maw’s grave and all the rest of it that these Jefferson meddlers have probably already persuaded you I was to blame for; naturally he won’t dare risk putting no such idea as that in her head and have her grab a-holt of you and go to Parchman and take him out tonight and have him back in Jefferson by breakfast tomorrow, when as it is he’s still got three more weeks, during which anything might happen: Linda or Mink or the Governor or the pardon board might die or Parchman itself might blow up. When did you say it would be?”
“When what will be?” Stevens said.
“The day they will let him out.”
“Oh. Some time after the twentieth. Probably the twenty-sixth.”
“The twenty-sixth,” Ratliff said. “And you’re going down there before?”
“Next week,” Stevens said. “To leave the money and talk with the Warden myself. That he is not to touch the money until he promises to leave Mississippi before sundown and never come back.”
“In that case,” Ratliff said, “everything’s all right. Especially if I—” He stopped.
“If you what?” Stevens said.
“Nothing,” Ratliff said. “Fate, and destiny, and luck, and hope, and all of us mixed up in it — us and Linda and Flem and that durn little half-starved wildcat down there in Parchman, all mixed up in the same luck and destiny and fate and hope until can’t none of us tell where it stops and we begin. Especially the hope. I mind I used to think that hope was about all folks had, only now I’m beginning to believe that that’s about all anybody needs — jest hope. The pore son of a bitch over yonder in that bank vault counting his money because that’s the one place on earth Mink Snopes can’t reach him in, and long as he’s got to stay in it he might as well count money to be doing something, have something to do. And I wonder if maybe he wouldn’t give Linda back her two hundred and fifty dollars without even charging her no interest on it, for them two years of pardon. And I wonder jest how much of the rest of the money in that vault he would pay to have another twenty years added on to them. Or maybe jest ten more. Or maybe jest one more.”
Ten days later Stevens was in the Warden’s office at the state penitentiary. He had the money with him — twenty-five ten-dollar notes, quite new. “You don’t want to see him yourself?” the Warden said.
“No,” Stevens said. “You can do it. Anybody can. Simply offer him his choice: take the pardon and the two hundred and fifty dollars and get out of Mississippi as fast as he can, plus another two hundred and fifty every three months for the rest of his life if he never crosses the state line again; or stay here in Parchman another two years and rot and be damned to him.”
“Well, that ought to do it,” the Warden said. “It certainly would with me. Why is it whoever owns the two hundred and fifty dollars don’t want him to come back home so bad?”
Stevens said rapidly, “Nothing to come back to. Family gone and scattered, wife died twenty-five or thirty years ago and nobody knows what became of his two daughters. Even the tenant house he lived in either collapsed of itself or maybe somebody found it and chopped it up and hauled it away for firewood.”
“That’s funny,” the Warden said. “Almost anybody in Mississippi has got at least one cousin. In fact, it’s hard not to have one.”
“Oh, distant relations,” Stevens said. “Yes, it seems to have been the usual big scattered country clan.”
“So one of these big scattered connections don’t want him back home enough to pay two hundred and fifty dollars for it.”
“He’s mad,” Stevens said. “Somebody here during the last thirty-eight years must have had that idea occur to them and suggested it to you even if you hadn’t noticed it yourself.”
“We’re all mad here,” the Warden said. “Even the prisoners too. Maybe it’s the climate. I wouldn’t worry, if I were you. They all make these threats at the time — big threats, against the judge or the prosecuting lawyer or a witness that stood right up in public and told something that any decent man would have kept to himself; big threats: I notice there’s no place on earth where a man can be as loud and dangerous as handcuffed to a policeman. But even one year is a long time sometimes. And he’s had thirty-eight of them. So he don’t get the pardon until he agrees to accept the money. Why do you know he won’t take the money and doublecross you?”
“I’ve noticed a few things about people too,” Stevens said. “One of them is, how a bad man will work ten times as hard and make ten times the sacrifice to be credited with at least one virtue no matter how Spartan, as the upright man will to avoid the most abject vice provided it’s fun. He tried to kill his lawyer right there in the jail during the trial when the lawyer suggested pleading him crazy. He will know that the only sane thing to do is to accept the money and the pardon, since to refuse the pardon because of the money, in two more years he not only wouldn’t have the two thousand dollars, he might even be dead. Or, what would be infinitely worse, he would be alive and free at last and poor, and Fle—” and stopped himself.
“Yes?” the Warden said. “Who is Fleh, that might be dead himself in two years more and so out of reach for good? The one that owns the two hundred and fifty dollars? Never mind,” he said. “I’ll agree with you. Once he accepts the money, everything is jake, as they say. That’s what you want?”
“That’s right,” Stevens said. “If there should be any sort of hitch, you can call me at Jefferson collect.”
“I’ll call you anyway,” the Warden said. “You’re trying too hard not to sound serious.”
“No,” Stevens said. “Only if he refuses the money.”
“You mean the pardon, don’t you?”
“What’s the difference?” Stevens said.
So when about midafternoon on the twenty-sixth he answered his telephone and Central said, “Parchman, Mississippi, calling Mr Gavin Stevens. Go ahead, Parchman,” and the faint voice said, “Hello. Lawyer?” Stevens thought rapidly So I am a coward after all. When it happens two years from now, at least none of it will spatter on me. At least I can tell her now because this will prove it and said into the mouthpiece:
“So he refused to take the money.”
“Then you already know,” Ratliff’s voice said.
“. . . What?” Stevens said after less than a second actually. “Hello?”
“It’s me,” Ratliff said. “V.K. At Parchman. So they already telephoned you.”
“Telephoned me what?” Stevens said. “He’s still there? He refused to leave?”
“No, he’s gone. He left about eight this morning. A truck going north—”
“But you just said he didn’t take the money.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. We finally located the money about fifteen minutes ago. It’s still here. He—”
“Hold it,” Stevens said. “You said eight this morning. Which direction?”
“A Negro seen him standing by the highway until he caught a ride on a cattle truck going north, toward Tutwiler. At Tutwiler he could have went to Clarksdale and then on to Memphis. Or he could have went from Tutwiler to Batesville and on to Memphis that-a-way. Except that anybody wanting to go from Parchman to Jefferson could go by Batesville too lessen he jest wanted to go by way of Chicago or New Orleans for the trip. Otherwise he could be in Jefferson pretty close to now. I’m leaving right now myself and maybe you better—”
“All right,” Stevens said.
“And maybe Flem too,” Ratliff said.
“Damn it, I said all right,” Stevens said.
“But not her yet,” Ratliff said. “Ain’t no need to tell her yet that likely she’s jest finished killing her maw’s husband—”
But he didn’t even hear that, the telephone was already down; he didn’t even have his hat when he reached the Square, the street below, the bank where Snopes would be in one direction, the courthouse where the Sheriff would be in the other: not that it really mattered which one he saw first, thinking So I really am a coward after all the talk about destiny and fate that didn’t even sell Ratliff.
“You mean,” the Sheriff said, “he had already spent thirty-eight years in Parchman, and the minute somebody gets him out he’s going to try to do something that will send him straight back even if it don’t hang him first this time? Don’t be foolish. Even a fellow like they say he was would learn that much sense in thirty-eight years.”
“Ha,” Stevens said without mirth. “You expressed it exactly that time. You were probably not even a shirt-tail boy back in 1908. You were not in that courtroom that day and saw his face and heard him. I
was.”
“All right,” the Sheriff said. “What do you want me to do?”
“Arrest him. What do you call them? roadblocks? Don’t even let him get into Yoknapatawpha County.”
“On what grounds?”
“You just catch him, I’ll furnish you with grounds as fast as you need them. If necessary we will hold him for obtaining money under false pretences.”
“I thought he didn’t take the money.”
“I don’t know what happened yet about the money. But I’ll figure out some way to use it, at least long enough to hold him on for a while.”
“Yes,” the Sheriff said. “I reckon you would. Let’s step over to the bank and see Mr Snopes; maybe all three of us can figure out something. Or maybe Mrs Kohl. You’ll have to tell her too, I reckon.”
Whereupon Stevens repeated almost verbatim what Ratliff had said into the telephone after he had put it down: “Tell a woman that apparently she just finished murdering her father at eight o’clock this morning?”
“All right, all right,” the Sheriff said. “You want me to come to the bank with you?”
“No,” Stevens said. “Not yet anyway.”
“I still think you have found a booger where there wasn’t one,” the Sheriff said. “If he comes back here at all, it’ll just be out at Frenchman’s Bend. Then all we’ll have to do is pick him up the first time we notice him in town and have a talk with him.”
“Notice, hell,” Stevens said. “Ain’t that what I’m trying to tell you? that you don’t notice him. That was the mistake Jack Houston made thirty-eight years ago: he didn’t notice him either until he stepped out from behind that bush that morning with that shotgun — if he even stepped out of the bushes before he shot, which I doubt.”
He recrossed the Square rapidly, thinking Yes, I really am a coward, after all when that quantity, entity with which he had spent a great deal of his life talking or rather having to listen to (his skeleton perhaps, which would outlast the rest of him by a few months or years — and without doubt would spend that time moralising at him while he would be helpless to answer back) answered immediately Did anyone ever say you were not? Then he But I am not a coward: I am a humanitarian. Then the other You are not even an original; that word is customarily used as a euphemism for it.
Complete Works of William Faulkner Page 535
